BYGONES will be bygones, Charles Oakley said, dressing for a game last night that was only big because the Raptors needed to win it.

Of course, Oak always was the first to say that basketball players were commodities, until it was his turn to be sent away to a place even colder than the business itself.

But time does pass, even better than Oak. Antonio Davis is now a teammate, another reminder that life goes around like the brushes of a car wash. Fifteen months removed from New York, Oak is back to waxing philosophically.

Asked how’s life, Oakley said. “I’m still alive. I have a life.”

It’s even turned out to be worth living in Toronto, despite every indication that it would be a place where 35-year-old power forwards’ careers go to die. Oakley had 25-30 tickets in his hands in the locker room before last night’s Knicks-Raptors game at the Garden, reason to believe he wouldn’t have to apologize to anyone who used them.

“We’re like Wall Street, up and down,” Oakley said. “We don’t know which team shows up. We have talent to play with anybody in the league if we come to play.”

More often than not, the 14-11 Raptors do, and just as important, they make their opponents decide.

“Davis, [Kevin] Willis and Oakley are three physically strong, intimidating and nasty guys,” Jeff Van Gundy said. “They are as physical inside as anybody in the league.”

Oakley didn’t want to leave the Knicks. In a sense, he has taken the old Knicks with him to Canada.

Davis, who battled Oakley so hard in all those series against the Pacers, who outplayed Oakley badly enough in the 1998 playoffs to convince Ernie Grunfeld that Oak’s time had come, was acquired for a No. 1 pick.

Toronto now has a hockey defense in front of the basket, a superstar in Vince Carter, an identity, which any team that doesn’t play hockey in that city would need.

The Knicks and Raptors actually made a trade that helped both teams exactly as they had hoped. What a concept. Oakley gave the floundering Raptors credibility, defense, rebounding and, most important, a role model in a league where they are a lot less plentiful than talents.

Presumed by many to be a one-year rental, Oakley re-upped with the Raptors, not only because they could pay him more than any of the contenders showing interest – including the Knicks and Blazers – but because their run at a playoff spot last year made them worth hanging around.

Marcus Camby, whose work habits were at the core of Toronto’s problems, the reason why they could add a lottery pick every year and not turn the corner, needed a more demanding atmosphere to teach him what being a winning player in the NBA is all about.

The trade of Oakley was supposed to have left an irreparable hole in the Knicks’ interior defense, but 18 months later they are the league’s fourth-best defensive team.

Rebounds were lost, particularly on the defensive side, but the big lineup Van Gundy began to play Monday night against Charlotte, should solve that problem and overcome whatever increase in turnovers results from the minutes the Knicks will be on the court without a pure point guard.

Camby’s shot blocking makes him just as intimidating a presence as Oakley ever was, whether any opposition player winds up on the floor or not. The Knicks are, as Grunfeld intended, younger, more athletic, more entertaining to watch.

“Camby’s done a good job for them,” Oakley said. That’s not what he predicted at the time of the deal, suggesting a “slasher” would be a duck out of water come the half-court Eastern Conference playoffs. The give-no-quarter, ask-no-quarter tough guy and resident pragmatist curiously took the trade personally, ripping Grunfeld for his rationale.

“Just be a man and say what you’ve done,” Oakley said. “You made a trade, you made a trade. Don’t say you got younger. You got one young body, you still got 12 old bodies.”

Three more of them were turned into Latrell Sprewell, a West Coast guy Oakley said wasn’t going to make a difference in the East Coast playoffs. It looked like he was going to be right for a while, but he turned out to be dead wrong, looking like a grouchy, bitter old man in the process.

But that’s all water through the wash now, a seventh of which is opening in Brooklyn. The house in White Plains is up for sale, he’s moving to the West Side, while helping the Raptors turn the corner, with 7.4 rebounds, 3.4 assists, 5.6 points per game.

“A good trade is when both teams benefit,” Van Gundy said. “In this one, they benefited because he fits into as physical a front court as you could have. Marcus gives us a player who is different than anybody else we have.”

Or anybody else has, either. Toronto, meanwhile got the one, the only Charles Oakley. And still doing what he does best at age 36, there continues to be much to be said for that.